What do you think GM Hikaru IQ is?

I'll let the fact that you choose to argue (again) through namecalling speak to your arguments about IQ and its worth as a measure. Your attempts to contort/deflect/move the goalposts are bolded above...all constructions of your own mind (which seems heavily dependent on confirmation bias). As for psychoanalysis...yeah, I'm not the least bit curious about your attempts on this front given your posting history.

Binet created the IQ test to identify children with special needs en masse. That is what it is for. IQ tests are highly inaccurate at the high and low ends (anything outside 2 standard deviations especially).

P.S. Nobody uses the term Yuppies anymore, that's something you should not be "carrying onward". Wow. No wonder you are stuck on IQ, you seem to be living in the 1900s still.

Again with the verbal abuse. Try arguments that are convincing instead.

You seem to be the sort of person who holds others to a different standard than they hold themselves to. There's not much reason to take your standards very seriously.

You also like to invert cause and effect in the process, you've done that quite a few times throughout our meaningless debates.

Keep trying

If you cannot tell the difference between calling specific posters ignoramuses and dunces directly and what I posted, you are never going to convince anyone of that 142...

Einstein's IQ is is not based on smartness but is based on your knowledge of the world not just math and science.

Scott Barry Kaufman. PhD, Yale. Professor, Columbia. BTW, those are both Ivy League.

I’ve read his book. Maybe you should.

Some of your claims are things I read in the 1990s in The Bell Curve. That book was thoroughly discredited.

Oh but I thought you were so above suggestions of duncery? I see, you just mean explicit statements. Remind me again what your point is?

So basically if it's wrapped up in pretense you find it perfectly acceptable, but if it's straight and to the point... now that's something which may offend your delicate sensibilities.

The difference in our posts is that you responded to statements of fact with some weird psychoanalysis, obviously out of malice, whereas I responded to your comment in kind. See, you're the sort of person who adheres to the letter of the law while the spirit of the law is beyond you. And so you craft these arbitrary rules for decorum in a way that serves you, but these rules are very shallow... So why should I take them seriously? If we're going to be hostile and malicious let us be open about it, stop imposing onto me these arbitrarily little games of decorum.

And who do I need to convince, btw? Throughout this conversation there have been multiple instances where you've demonstrated how caught up in others perceptions you are, you even suggested earlier others perceptions is what determines whether an argument is worth addressing. It's the same thing you're doing in this IQ debate, denying its validity... why? Others perceptions. You're obviously a very pretentious person. I'm really not. You mentioned your IQ earlier, in response I stated mine, and that is the only time I've brought it up. Since then you people have brought it up probably a dozen times. It's not me who's fixating on my IQ, it's you people actually.

What I am doing is refusing to play this game of pretenses where we all pretend IQ has no validity... because it ignores statistical reality. Obviously these sorts of games you play alot, and care alot about. You have your philosophy and approach to life, I have mine.

I'm willing to bet there is someone on here with a higher IQ than 142. This forum attracts alot of smart people ... (I'm not saying wise, but smart). Will said person please step forward and reveal their IQ.

The fact Einstein had a genius IQ, and also made multiple breakthroughs in physics, is a complete coincidence... it means absolutely nothing. And anyone who suggests otherwise is a very bad man.

You mean this claim?

The causal influence of brain size on human intelligence: Evidence from within-family phenotypic associations and GWAS modeling - PMC (nih.gov)

Or this one?

Intelligence, reaction times, and peripheral nerve conduction velocity - ScienceDirect

If you're one of those who think Hikaru's chess skill proves that he's a genius, I invite you to watch the YouTube video where he struggles, quite severely, to figure out a basic 15-puzzle.

You will find yourself questioning your belief - or at least you will find yourself wanting to ask some questions.

But that's not a knock at Hikaru. Credit where credit is due: when it comes to chess, he's completely astonishing. A result of his upbringing (coached from a young age by his FIDE Master stepfather, and encouraged to pursue chess above everything else), and his relentless obsession with the game.

But his expertise (or "intellect", or "aptitude", or whatever term we prefer to use) is clearly specific to chess, and perhaps to chess alone. The knowledge built from such a task isn't necessarily transferrable.

I wouldn't say it proves he's a genius, but I am pretty confident he's quite a bit above average. Genius is very rare, like 1 in 800 people are genius.

When Hikaru took his infamous online IQ test he didn't even complete the test, he just put random answers in for a number of questions toward the end. And it's an online IQ test, it's probably not been normed correctly... He says himself it's not accurate... so yes, I think you people greatly underestimate how intelligent he is.

It doesn't offend me, actually. Not coming from you, in any case. As each statement makes clear (if you read them with a discerning eye), I am calling you out, not professing that I am offended...your namecalling just attempts to disguise your lack of a viable position. It's also against TOS, but that's another distinction you might have to learn the hard way.

Lol, you mentioned IQ first. Anyone that has ever seen me in a discussion with Optimissed (the king of IQ claims here on the forums) knows that I do not mention my IQ (and never the exact score, because exact IQ scores are pretty meaningless) except when I am disproving some kind of silly claim (like someone is only able to hold a negative opinion of IQ as a measure if they are low IQ...this is a motivation that tracks with your demeanor, but not mine. There's a name in the social sciences for people that cannot see anything from other's perspectives...

Go ahead and dig back if you like...and while you are digging, btw, I have mentioned your IQ score exactly once, to make a clear point that you seem to have missed.

Claims of 150+ IQs on the forums are worthless, by the way. In fact, if you look at the various IQ threads over time, self reporting IQs here somehow seem to show that over half of the people on chess.com are geniuses.

Lastly, you didn't grok the point I made about letting other posters decide for themselves what they perceive...what I meant was that the way you argue, with namecalling and straw-manning attempts, doesn't mean a thing...posters will draw their own conclusions. So, it doesn't matter. By continuing to engage me the way you are doing right now, you are only hurting your own position (and your long term reputation here), you just aren't able to realize it.

Incorrect. "Genius" level IQ is enjoyed by roughly 1 of 250 tested people (worldwide).

If your argument is that being "casual" about the test dropped Hikaru's performance 70 or 80 points, from 1 in a million to "the guy next door", then I submit that your understanding of IQ is not where you think it is...

I find it amusing that you are one claiming people are just waffling around and that you are the more knowledgeable and precise "social scientist", then you toss out that baseless claim from memory like a...well, non-scientist is the most accurate and kind way to put it.

There's really no official definition or starting point of genius, but the typical suggestion is to define it on the boundaries of either 3 or 4 Standard Deviations... so that's 145 or 160. An IQ of 145 is about 1 in 800. I've seen 140 sometimes called near genius... that's about 1 in 250. I'm not aware of a source that calls 140 genius. But anyway, you seem to be suggesting there's an actual agreed upon definition for genius, this isn't the case, you once again have no idea what you're talking about.

What's hilarious is you're presuming to correct me about official definitions regarding genius when there actually is no rock-hard definition.

Man you just make it so easy.

I don't know how you arrived at this duncey interpretation of my post. Can you not read? Do you not clearly see me say "I wouldn't say it proves he's a genius" on the very first line...? And then I say genius is about 1 in 800, so if I'm suggesting he's possibly below that... obviously I'm not suggesting he's 1 in a million, am I ...? I don't understand how you derive this interpretation from my post.

It probably doesn't offend you personally, because you don't really believe in your own standards. But you do deem my behavior to be offensive. What this shows is how you adopt these rules instrumentally... they're superficial, they're just used as leverage... when we look deeper, they're meaningless and self-serving. That's my point. You're just a very superficial individual playing the game of being offended. A game I don't have much interest in playing, but this is something I would expect from a manager type. This is the sort of thing managers do, they play politics and they strive to increase their power / exert their control over others. For whatever reason I don't feel the same need, probably because I can just count on being correct and hold people accountable to that. That's really the difference - I've been correct about IQ this entire time, and you have been wrong the entire time. So yes, you need some standard to hold me to, and it can't be reason, it needs to be moral offendedness. And so we get this contrived standard.

Again there's the misrepresentation of cause and effect - when you behave inappropriately you characterize it as standing up to misbehavior... but the other person has no justification, they are always the cause and you are always the effect. From there promote all these arbitrary and meaningless moral standards.

If you want to taddle to the mods be my guest - mods have alot in common with managers, this is probably what you live for, it could even work out for you, but even if it did, you would still be incorrect about IQ. However, this place is hardly even monitored, there are often spammers making posts advertising call girls which don't get deleted... so I doubt anything will happen, but the worst that could happen is essentially that I am forced to quit wasting large amounts of time on this forum / quit speaking to you... really for my own good... I've been getting banned from forums for saying true things for a very long time, it's never bothered me enough for me to stop doing it.

Well the entire thread is about IQ so I really don't know who mentioned it first, but admittedly I speculated you may have a low IQ due to the fact you have some odd need to deny very obvious facts about IQ. However, this was just speculation, and I've entertained other explanations - yuppie is another possibility, general moral confusion / deluded sense of compassion is another... but there are many possible explanations. Really i am just looking for an explanation. Because we do require an explanation for why very simple obvious facts about IQ trigger malice in you. I think you quoted like 12 threads earlier where you've debated people about IQ and downplayed the relationship between chess playing and IQ. Obviously this matters alot to you. It is just not rational behavior.

It's possible, sure.

But I wouldn't rely on his chess skill as the sole measuring stick for that - is mostly what I'm saying. I believe too many on this thread (and threads similar to it) are so quick to conflate chess ability with IQ, as if the two automatically go hand in hand.

Personally, I believe chess ability is a learnable skill.

Like being a mechanic, or a carpenter. Or adopting a foreign language. None of these things should come naturally. Most of the general public would perform poorly at any of these, actually, compared to an expert or professional ... not because they lack the necessary IQ for it, but because they haven't properly studied or sufficiently devoted themselves to learning the craft.

You likely won't become a professional mechanic just by watching the occasional How-To video on YouTube.

Likewise with chess ...

Yet so many players approach chess in this way, then marvel at the gap between themselves and titled masters. "Surely, the masters must have superior IQs!"

But it's too rash to jump to this as the immediate conclusion. It neglects to address the countless hours of high-level study and instruction that said masters have endured to reach their current level.

Players like Hikaru don't just fall onto their mountaintop peaks - they have to climb their way up ...

He's not merely a GM.... which is a hell of an achievement in itself. He's probably world number 2 in blitz... Yes, I think this is a good, reliable indicator of significantly above average intelligence. It is a mental game ... it requires multiple aspects of intelligence... it is a game played all around the world by millions of people... what he has achieved is a hell of a thing.

What I would argue is that all the factors need to converge to reach the very top - intelligence, upbringing, practice, love of the game, whatever else...

There was a study earlier that showed the average 2000 rated player has a 120 IQ. This puts them in the top 10th percentile. The standard deviation of elo in this study was like 170ish, and for IQ it was like 14.8... based on this data it seems very plausible the average GM IQ is around 135 or so. I saw a study in the past that studied GM IQs and it was around 135, I could not find the data to show people, however based on the data we do have... 135 is a very reasonable estimate, infact it's even a little conservative. Now... there are about 1300 GMs I believe, and Hikaru is an outlier at the top. So why would we expect him to be such an outlier at the bottom end of the intelligence spectrum amongst his peers... we wouldn't. You are correct we do not know his IQ, and I have not suggested we do. But we can take a guess.....

Learning requires intelligence.... I tutored students at university for a while. There are certain students who cannot learn basic concepts without hours of study. These people would come into tutoring every day, study for hours... they would be stuck trying to figure out chapter 2 and the class is way ahead at chapter 9. They'd get mostly Fs in their classes, and have to repeat them 3 times to pass. Usually they'd just flunk out though. As you would explain a concept to them... they could not follow simple explanations, and they were trying, and I was trying, and others were trying with them... If you don't believe me... well, maybe you need to teach and see it for yourself. Not everyone can just memorize enormous amounts of information the way that top chess players can.

You know, there are differences in average IQ across professions as well. Professions have to be learned.. but they also have varying levels of complexity. A mechanic isn't competing in a mental game against other mechanics... Take a look at the following chart:

I suppose it would seem "easy", if you just didn't know stuff. and made things up (like 1 in 800, for example)...

You are incorrect, again. 140 has been the threshold for the highest category for quite some time and that category has been called "genius" all along, since 1916. The scale was cemented as recently as the 5th Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale (SB5) in 2003. Terman stopped using the term "genius" officially in 1937, for the 2nd major revision, as they wanted to curb the public's lax usages and misunderstandings. Obviously, that effort did not fare too well, but it was well-intentioned.

If you don't believe the 160-180 IQ hype about top chessplayers, then that's a step in the right direction...but if that's the case you sure aren't arguing the right points...stop promoting the idea that IQ level X is required for chess title Y...

What is this becoming into!?

No, I'm afraid you are completely wrong yet again.

This is Terman's original 1916 IQ classification scale.

IQ classification - Wikipedia

Do you see the word "near" there? Now... do you know what near means? Let's look it up.

"Near: at or to a short distance away; nearby."

That's right... as I already said:

The range of 140-144 is traditionally called near genius. Meaning not quite genius. The 3rd SD boundary was counted as genius.

You're just wrong every time, aren't you? You can't get it right. Fortunately for you this isn't an official IQ test. Keep trying though

I have never suggested that a high IQ is required to achieve a chess title. This is yet another very duncey interpretation of my arguments. What I have said is that GMs have an average IQ that is significantly above the population average, therefor I am confident Hikaru has an IQ significantly above the population average. Confidence is a firm belief, it is held in the face of uncertainty.... without uncertainty you can't have confidence. I have never implied that I know Hikaru's IQ.

However... there is some baseline of IQ necessary to become a GM. Just as there is a baseline IQ necessary to operate a motor vehicle, just as Koko the worlds smartest Gorilla isn't going to become a GM. What is that baseline? I don't know, but it does exist. The retarded kid at your school isn't going to be a GM one day, he's not going to become a brain surgeon either or a rocket scientist either...